"If you want to solve our drug problem, you won't do it by trying to cut off the supply and arresting street pushers alone," Powell said. "It will only be solved when we place into the heart of every child growing up in American the moral strength never to fall for the destructive lure of drugs."

On Tuesday, speakers at a Shadow Convention – created to debate topics the carefully scripted GOP gathering will address only in passing – questioned whether Americans should continue to be imprisoned for using recreational drugs.

Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) told a packed conference hall: "Drug prohibition is what is tearing this country apart. It's not drug use. Nobody wants to hear the facts.... Marijuana should be legal."

Johnson said that he doesn't recommend the use of drugs but that smoking pot in the privacy of your own home should not be a crime.

Whether to legalize drugs or increase penalties pits two wings of the Republican Party against each other: law-and-order conservatives who favor expanded police power versus libertarian-leaning Republicans who are suspicious of more and more federal laws.

So far, both major parties have generally supported the "drug war" – which has included handing police the ability to conduct increasingly intrusive surveillance. FBI Director Louis Freeh, for instance, has argued that the war on drugs is a reason to restrict the availability of encryption software without backdoors for federal agents.

"I am not soft on drugs," said Rep. Tom Campbell, who is running against Democrat Dianne Feinstein for California's open Senate seat. "I think pushers are punks and cowards who should be punished with the full force of the law.

"But the money used to send military helicopters and advisers to Colombia to intervene in a 30-year-old guerrilla war would be better spent on drug treatment programs at home."

Some Democrats also spoke at the Shadow Convention, which is convening again in Los Angeles in two weeks. "We've got 5 percent of the world's population, but we've got 25 percent of the world's jail population," said Rev. Jesse Jackson. "It's an international shame."

Coordinating the Shadow Convention, which continues Wednesday with a look at poverty, is George Soros's Lindesmith Center, which argues for drug policy reform.